ROUND 20 PREVIEW V PERTH

SOUTH Fremantle will gear up for a seventh consecutive finals appearance by taking on Perth at Lathlain in the last round of the 2022 home and away season on Saturday afternoon.

While South Fremantle is locked away in a finals position and Perth is out of the running, there will still be plenty to play for on both sides at Mineral Resources Park to close the 2022 WAFL season.

The Bulldogs currently sit in fourth position with 11 wins, five losses and a draw for the season. That means they are guaranteed of at least finishing in fourth position no matter what happens on Saturday.

However, a win for the Bulldogs and they could still finish in a top three position depending on what happens with West Perth, East Fremantle and Claremont in their matches against Subiaco, East Perth and West Coast respectively also on Saturday afternoon.

Perth might be crying out for the end of the season, but with Steve Armstrong in charge following the departure as coach of Garry Moss, he will be looking to show what he can get out of the Demons and they would love nothing more than to finish their season with the upset victory.

Even though South Fremantle has played in the last six WAFL preliminary finals and three Grand Finals, and Perth has struggled for the most part during that run, recent matches between the two teams have been fascinating.

While the Bulldogs have won the last two meetings including by 39 points earlier this season in Round 9 at Fremantle Community Bank Oval, fascinatingly it was the Demons who had won the previous four clashes.

Three of those wins came by six points or less including the memorable last round victory in 2020 that locked away a return to the finals for Perth even though South Fremantle went on to win the premiership weeks later.

South Fremantle comes into Saturday’s game on the back of a hard earned nine-point win against East Perth in their last home game of the season last Saturday.

That gave the Bulldogs consecutive wins after beating Subiaco the week before to improve them to 11 wins, five losses and a draw on the season and to sit in fourth position.

South Fremantle will finish fourth on Saturday no matter the result against Perth provided West Perth, East Fremantle and Claremont win their matches.

However, if any of those top three teams lose then the Bulldogs will finish ahead of them especially in the case of the Sharks and Tigers. If West Perth loses to Subiaco, it would come down to percentage between the Bulldogs and Falcons as to who would finish higher on the ladder.

South Fremantle coach Todd Curley knows that all his team can do is take care of business against the Demons on Saturday and then wait to see where all the cards fall.

“It’s a funny one where it’s not in our control other than winning our game,” Curley said.

“If we win that, that’s all we can do and if we have an extraordinary amount of luck and the top three teams above us don’t win and we have a very strong win then we could finish anywhere from first to fourth.

“The one thing we do know is that we will have a home final in Week 1 if we stay where we are. You just want to qualify and we’re really confident of whatever teams are still in it that we can still beat.

“Qualifying is the first thing and we’ve ticked that off, and we just have to wait until Saturday night to find out what happens with the order. We only need one to drop and we can get a double chance but we just have to wait and see, and take care of our own game at Lathlain.”

ROUND 20 – 2022 WAFL PREMIERSHIP SEASON
SOUTH FREMANTLE v PERTH – MINERAL RESOURCES PARK, SATURDAY 2.10PM

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